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Originally published as:

Stuart A. Rice. "Statistical Studies of Social
Attitudes and Public Opinion." Chapter 11 in Stuart A. Rice (ed). Statistics
in Social Studies. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press (1930):
171-192.

Editors' notes

This paper is presented as part of the history of attitude scaling.
Beyond its unique contributions to the field, the paper documents Rice's
participation in the Second National Conference on the Science of
Politics — where Floyd Allport and Leon Thurstone first discussed the method
that would evolve into Thurstonian scaling.

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Statistical Studies of Social Attitudes and Public Opinion

Stuart A. Rice

STATISTICAL analysis is only employed where a plurality of individual items
or units is involved. It is commonplace to say that the first task of the
statistician is to define his units.[1]
It is not so often pointed out that units are frequently arbitrary, and that
they may depend upon a prior conceptual, analytic, or philosophical process. A
given field of investigation may be so formulated, on the one hand, that a
plurality of units does not appear. This formulation will preclude the use of
statistics, or at least direct attention away from the possibilities of
statistical statement. On the other hand, the formulation may be such as to
render the statistical mode of attack inevitable and imperative, or at least to
call attention to its possibilities and advantages.

Consider an illustration which will anticipate, by a few pages, the later
discussion: In some Pennsylvania communities it is believed that if the shavings
resulting from the manufacture of a coffin are not swept up and placed therein
prior to a burial their presence among the survivors will bring further death or
misfortune. If, without further instructions, a teacher were to ask a class of
graduate students, "How would you proceed to investigate such a superstition as
this? " he would

(
172) probably receive two types of replies: a portion of the class would
propose to inquire into the historical circumstances under which the
superstition arose and under which it was evolved and diffused; another portion
of the class would suggest attempts to explain why the superstition should gain
credence in human minds. Neither group would be likely to propose statistical
modes of inquiry, because the historical and psychological approaches are
suggested when the belief is labeled with the concept superstition.
Suppose, however, that the class is asked, "How would you proceed to
investigate such a superstitious attitude as this?" Without any restatement of
the data and by inserting the single word "attitude," the teacher has changed
the connotation of the question and suggested a new type of inquiry. The word
"superstition" seems to refer to a discrete psychological entity, one which is
either held or not held by individuals. The word "attitude" evokes a concept of
something variable, to be examined statistically. The extent to which the two
questions actually evoked these two concepts, respectively, would, of course,
depend upon the extent to which the suggestions which the terms contain were
uncritically accepted inthe minds of the students. For instance, one
might say "superstition" and the student of independent type might
think:
"attitude—hence, variable."

The process of conceptual formulation has been presented so far as one which
precedes and directs the choice of further means of inquiry. But the sequence
may be reversed. The desire to proceed quantitatively, for example, may bring
about a conceptual reformulation of the subject matter. This, we have been told
by Mitchell, is something which has actually taken place in the recent
development of

(
173) the science of economics.[2]
A
similar trend is discernible in political science.

This discipline, like history, has until recently been largely concerned with
legal formulations; and with unique, non-repetitive situations. When James Bryce
discussed "modern democracies" he did indeed utilize what Bernard and
Kirkpatrick call "the informal statistical method."[3]
But it was more usual for political scientists to discuss single states, and to
deal with formal aspects of their constitutional organization and activities.
One cannot use statistics readily in explaining the constitutional limitations
imposed upon the authority of the Federal Government, or in de-scribing the
history of diplomatic relations between the United States and Great Britain. But
when the general notion of the State becomes less absolute and more functional,
when sovereignty comes increasingly to be regarded as pluralistic, when
formalism is replaced by realism as a premise in the observation of events, then
statistical method begins to have a rôle to play. Such actual changes as these
in the developing concepts of political science have resulted in the use of
statistical methods. At the same time, they have been a result of the
prestige attached to statistics, especially in the sister subject of economics.

Florence, like Catlin,[4]
does not
even limit the scope of political inquiry to the State. In his recent important
book, Florence sets out "to provide for statistical politics the analytic
framework, and the

(
174) apparatus of thought" that have already been so largely achieved in
economics. Hence, political science "is interested in the acts or behaviour of
men toward men, their mutual interrelations and reciprocal contacts; the orders,
punishments, votes, verdicts. appointments, dismissals, passing transitively
from men to men, and the meetings and discussions between men, that form part of
their relations of ruling, manning and sharing of work"(364). So viewed,
statistical politics becomes not so much a possibility as a necessity, and the
author is able to itemize in considerable detail the statistical inquiries which
are required to fill in the frame.

When we come to the subject of attitudes and opinions, then, the first task
appears to be an examination of the concepts, and attendant definitions, upon
which statistical treatment depends. The process of conceptual formulation has
gone on rapidly during the past half decade. It must be admitted that there is
still lacking that extent of agreement among investigators which gives assurance
that all are talking about the same entities when the same terms are used.
(However, this is still quite generally the situation in social science.) Two
developments of thought which seem to have laid the basis for the present
interest in attitude measurement will be indicated at this point.

The first of these developments has been pointed out by Franklin Fearing in a
survey of the subject, as yet unpublished.[5]
He notes that present interest in the study of attitudes represents a reaction
from the stimulus-response psychology of a few years ago. That is, it represents
renewed direction of attention

(
175) writer inward, toward directing motivations in the organism itself, and
away from those factors in the external environment that provide the stimulus.
By way of definition, Fearing says: "All those factors involved in the readiness
or preparedness of the organism to respond are referred to under the terms which
we have used, i.e., determining tendencies, mental set and attitude. These
include all the processes preceding and determining the motor side of the act,
not excepting those processes which antedate the stimulus itself. The latter
becomes merely a releasing mechanism."

This might seem to remove investigation entirely from the sociological to the
psychological level. It would do so except for the second of the developments to
which reference has been made. This appears when the concept of attitude, as
just set forth by Fearing, is compared with the concept of instinct, recently so
prevalent. In once more directing his attention toward the drives within the
individual, the investigator has not returned to the instinct hypothesis. He has
taken with him the sociological concept of personality as a resultant of social
and cultural experience. Instincts and attitudes would otherwise be
identities concealed under different names. Instincts are conceived as inborn;
attitudes as composites of inborn drives and experience. Thus, F. H. Allport in
a publication of 1924 alludes to "the motor set thus built up by suggestion"
(i.e., by experience) which "we may call an attitude." [6]
The same distinction is found in a more recent "temporary" definition
by another psychologist, G. W. Allport. He refers to attitude as "a disposition
to act which is built up by the integration of numerous

(
176) specific responses of a similar type, but which exists as a general
neural "set,' and when activated by a specific stimulus results in behavior that
is more obviously a function of the disposition than of the activating stimulus.
The important thing to note about this definition is that it considers attitudes
as broad, generic (not simple and specific) determinants of behavior." [7]
Attitudes are "built up by ... responses" not given in the germ plasm
at the start of the individual's life.

The consequences for our subject of this distinction between instincts and
attitudes are important. The concept of instinct puts an emphasis upon the
discrete character of the entity. The concept of attitude emphasizes its
variable character. The distinction is not, however, logic-tight. C. Kirkpatrick
and J. W. Woodard have called my attention to investigations posited upon the
assumption that instincts are variable, and a suggestion of similar import has
been made by W. F. Ogburn in his book, Social Change. The most that can
be contended is that the concept of instinct does not seem to favor such
investigations, while the concept of attitude does favor them. For if we start
with the concept of specific instincts, as did William McDougall, our major
problem becomes one of identifying these instincts. We are interested in whether
or not certain drives are to be found within us, rather than in variations in
the intensity of these drives. But if we conceive of attitudes as resultants, in
part, of experience, we necessarily have our attention focused upon their
variability. Since the experiences of people vary, so must also their attitudes,
if the latter grow out of the former. When con-

(
177) -fronted with a given stimulus, which more or less resembles a greater
or larger number of other stimuli hitherto responded to, the individual
attitudes evoked in a number of persons must be conceived as forming,
potentially at least, a continuum along a scale, when evaluated with respect to
any quality such as direction or intensity.

Two other theoretical considerations are relevant to the discussion at this
point, before taking up the topic of opinion. Some years ago Faris raised
the question whether' in discussing instincts, we were dealing with data or
hypotheses.[8]
It is sometimes suggested
that the same question is now timely with respect to attitudes. Are attitudes
hypotheses rather than data? The question seems debatable, and perhaps the
answer turns upon definition. At the same time, an affirmative answer would not
be especially damning. The concept of attitude, hypothesis though it may be,
provides a methodological postulate upon which to base interesting and useful
classifications of human behavior. Positing the attitude, we seek to find
behavior which we may attribute to it. Measurements of the behavior then provide
us with indexes of the attitude, which is thereby defined in terms of the
behavior. It is in this sense that it seems to the writer to be permissible to
say that attitudes can be measured. Moreover, it seems a useful assertion to
make, provided the conceptual or hypothetical nature of the terms be not
forgotten. It is more practicable to call a man "a conservative" than to
describe on each occasion the behavioristic class into which we would put him on
the basis of what he says and does.

(
178)

The second theoretical consideration concerns the possibility that attitudes
(and opinions) might be studied statistically as they are found at different
times or under different circumstances within a single individual. This
suggestion is implicit in Thurstone's formulation of the "law of comparative
judgment."[9]
No instructor, for example,
can regrade a set of examination papers with his first marks obscured and award
precisely the same grades on both occasions. In a series of decisions affecting
the rights and privileges of labor, we might expect an honest and seasoned
jurist to be at times more favorable and at times less favorable to labor's
cause. The curve expressing the distribution of such variations might, of
course, be distorted from the familiar bell-shaped form because of the
cumulative influence of habit or of varying trends in the learning process. In
this case, perhaps the concept of a time series of attitude expressions,
to be measured by a trend line, would be more applicable.[10]
However, the present paper is concerned, not with variations of attitude
within individuals, but with variations of attitude among
individuals. This lightens the task of establishing units that may be
statistically enumerated, for while the psychological states with which we are
concerned may remain obscure, the human "carriers" of these psycho-logical
states are distinct. As Thurstone has pointed out, the unit may consist either
of a single average expression of attitude upon a given topic by a single
person; or it may consist of any one among a plural

(
179) number of expressions of attitude upon the topic by a single person.
That is, there may be exactly as many attitudinal units to enumerate as there
are persons; pr there may be more attitudinal units than persons. ' In either
case, the process of identifying and counting the units is vastly simplified by
their identification with persons.

The argument with respect to attitudes up to this point may now be
summarized: We are dealing with psychological entities, "real" or
"hypothetical," conceived as variable among individual persons, the essential
nature of which if "real" we know little about, but which are brought to our
sense perceptions by behavioristic evidences [11]
which may be distinguished into units, classified, and enumerated.
Behavioristic evidences have not yet been discussed. The topic brings us to a
consideration of opinion and its relation to attitude.

In the first noteworthy American effort to measure the distribution of
opinions and to indicate their specific relationships to attitude, Allport and
Hartman [12]
do not develop clearly the
general dependence between the two concepts. At the Round Table on Political
Statistics of the Second National Conference on the Science of Politics,[13]
protracted discussion produced agreement on three points only concerning a
definition of opinion: (1) "It need not be the result of a rational process; (2)
it need not include an awareness of choice; and (3) it must be sufficiently
clear or

(
180) definite to create a disposition to act upon it under favorable
circumstances." Further, " On the question when is opinion public, the round
table was unable to come to a definite conclusion. "It will be noted that this
attempt to define opinion produced a concept strongly resembling that of
attitude, as previously defined. In connection with efforts to measure various
political phenomena, the writer expressed a preference "to avoid the use of the
term opinion and to use instead the word attitude, as indicating a
disposition or set toward behavior without reference to the degree of
rationality that may be present in connection with it. .. . `Opinion' and
`public opinion' seem . . . to connote too much of the rational and conscious
elements in the actual motivation." He therefore proceeded to "use the word
attitude in a somewhat inclusive sense, without endeavoring to determine in any
particular case whether the word opinion might be preferable." [14]

A formal attempt to relate the concepts of opinion and attitude for
methodological purposes has been made by Thurstone.[15]
"The concept `attitude,' he says, "will be used here to denote the sum total of
a man's inclinations and feelings, prejudice or bias, pre-conceived notions,
ideas, fears, threats, and convictions about any specified topic. . . . The
concept `opinion' will here mean a verbal expression of atti-

(
181) -tude." This distinction has an obvious methodological advantage.
Opinions are accessible. Either the opinion itself or the person holding it may
be treated as a unit, and classification may then follow, thereby permitting
statistical enumeration and analysis. If opinion is regarded as an index of
attitude, which Thurstone regards as below the verbal though not necessarily
below the reflective level, then attitudes gain a reflected objectivity and
precision from the opinions which represent them.

A criticism of Thurstone's concept of the relation-ship between attitude and
opinion will be withheld for a little, in order to proceed directly to an
examination of the essentials of his method. His procedure is the latest
attempt, as it is the most complete, rigorous, and rational, to employ
statistical methods in the study of attitudes. It will serve in this discussion
as the best example of an important and standard type of inquiry in this field.

Thurstone's most important achievement is his method of constructing a
rational scale of values, to which any number of relevant and unambiguous
propositions falling in the linear dimension of the scale may be related, each
with its own scale value. This has not hitherto been accomplished in attitude
measurements. The so-called scales established by predecessors have merely
consisted of an arrangement of statements in rank order. The intrusion into the
series of new statements, in this latter case, would have extended the scale by
a corresponding number of points, and thereby have disrupted all of the
so-called values with the corresponding frequencies, previously located upon it.
As Thurstone points out, the numbers of endorsements received for the various
statements on such a rank-order scale do not constitute

(
182) a frequency distribution in a statistical sense. In Thurstone's scale,
on the contrary, propositions may be added or taken away without affecting the
scale itself, which is therefore independent of particular
statements.

The technique employed in Thurstone's method represents, in a broad sense, an
endeavor to apply in the fields of attitude and opinion principles developed by
psychophysicists. In essence, the method consists of a determination of the
intervals which appear equidistant in the average opinion of several hundred
judges. A large number of statements, which are intended to include extreme
positions at both ends of a linear continuum of opinion, together with
inter-mediate positions, are sorted by each of the judges into eleven classes.
These classes appear to each judge to be equally spaced between the two
extremes. Each statement will have as many ratings between one and eleven as
there are judges. The accumulative proportions of the ratings received by each
statement in each of the eleven ordered positions are calculated. These
proportions are plotted on rectangular axes, in which the eleven scale positions
appear as abscissas and the accumulative proportions as ordinates. The resulting
accumulative curve for each proposition, similar to the familiar ogive, is
smoothed. The point on the X axis where the curve shows an interpolated
accumulative total of fifty percent of the cases is taken as the interpolated
scale value of the statement. This scale value is in terms of the eleven
equidistant positions into which the base line has been arbitrarily divided. The
scale value thus appears as a median valuation by the judges, graphically
determined.

The interquartile range, or Q-value, is taken as a measure of ambiguity. "If
a statement is very

(
183) ambiguous, the different readers will place it over a wider range on
the scale and the Q-value will be correspondingly high." It may then be rejected
in the selection of statements to compose the final scale which is to be used in
measuring the attitudes of a group of subjects. Thus, a statement is included in
the scale only when the judges are in relatively close agreement as to the
position which it should occupy with reference to other statements, and with
reference to the extremes of attitude.

The objective criterion of ambiguity which is afforded by the Q-value
somewhat mitigates, but does not wholly overcome, what seems to the writer to be
an inconsistency between two of the assumptions underlying Thurstone's method.
This concerns the relationship of opinions and attitudes. When judges are asked
to sort statements into classes, representing equidistant positions along a
linear scale, they are asked to make judgments concerning attitudes, not
to express their own attitudes. The judgment expressed may presumably be
called an opinion. For example, among a series of statements it is one's
opinion, as a judge, that statement A is a reflection of a more pacifistic
attitude than is statement B. The judge's own attitude may be quite
militaristic, but he is asked to express opinions concerning the comparative
pacifism exhibited by statements at the other end, and at all points, of the
scale. The task given him assumes that he is capable of expressing a rational
opinion concerning the opinions upon the issue in question, independently of his
own attitude toward the latter. All of this is in his capacity as a judge. But
suppose his own attitudes are then tested by means of the scale that he has
helped to construct. It is now assumed that his opinions are no longer

(
184) independent of his attitudes, but, on the contrary, that the former are
indexes or reflections of the latter. In the first case, his opinions must
be rational; in the second case, they must not be rational. It should be
clearly noted, however, that this criticism depends upon the legitimacy of
referring to judgments as
opinions.

What is the possibility that the acceptance or rejection by a subject of a
statement upon the completed scale may represent a rational judgment concerning
the truth or falsity of the statement made? It would seem to exist. If so, the
validity of the statement as an index of attitude is destroyed or impaired. If I
accept the statement that H2 and O when combined will produce the
chemical combination known as water, this does not express an attitude. It is a
statement of fact. Might it not be considered a statement of opinion, if there
were a degree of uncertainty upon the matter in my mind? If I concur in the
proposition that the corn borer is threatening the production of corn in the
United States, I might be credited with a factual judgment if I were an
agricultural expert. But since I am not, and if I were called upon to support
the proposition with evidence, would I not reply that I merely expressed an
opinion? My evidence is a bit hazy. My assent to the proposition does not
reflect an attitude toward the corn borer, for I may be either a bull or a bear
in the corn market. But if I concur in the proposition that "the organized
church is an enemy of science and truth," 16 this is taken as evidence of an
attitude (having a scale value of 10.7, or a position hostile to the church) in
a scale between hostility and favor

(
185) toward the church. Where is the distinction to be drawn between
factual-judgment opinions and attitude-representation opinions? The objective
criterion of ambiguity does at least eliminate statements upon which the judges
cannot agree closely as to a specific relationship between the opinion and an
assumed position on the attitude scale.

Another criticism concerns a subtle ambiguity in the use of the terms
"favorable" and "unfavorable" in describing the respective halves of the
attitude scale on either side of the neutral point. These terms are not used by
Thurstone, but have been employed by others who follow his general procedure. It
is possible to think of attitudes in terms of the effect they will have upon the
person, policy, or situation toward which they are directed. This is not always
easy to distinguish from what may be paradoxically called the intent of the
motor set within the subject himself. For example, if I am serving as a judge in
the construction of a scale designed to measure the attitudes of white people
toward persons of color, the effect upon the colored man may serve as my
criterion in distributing the statements into the various classes. In the case
of propositions A and B, I may reflect as follows : Proposition A, if generally
held by white people, would result in benefit to the Negroes. Proposition B, if
generally held, would result in less benefit. Hence, proposition A is more
favorable to the Negro than proposition B and should be placed at a higher (or
lower) position on the scale. The arrangement of propositions, then, is
determined by the state of the object rather than by the state of the subject.

To be specific, let us suppose that the judge is a psychiatrist. He is asked
to classify statements concerning the Negro into eleven classes; from Class One,

(
186) the least favorable, to Class Eleven, the most favor-able. Suppose he
is confronted with the statement: "I regard the Negro as I do myself, and will
share with him whatever I may possess at all times." Is this statement favorable
or unfavorable to the Negro? The psychiatrist may regard this as definitely
unfavorable, because he thinks that the Negro should be encouraged to develop
greater independence than such an attitude by whites would permit. Or, suppose
the statement to be: "I am impatient of the Negro's dependence upon sympathetic
white men. Force him to work and take care of himself." "Ah!" the psychiatrist
might rationally say to himself, "that is just what the Negro needs to throw off
the psycho-logical heritage of slavery. That is a favorable attitude!" And would
he not be right, assuming the correctness of his premises? The attitude would be
favorable toward, i.e., result in benefit to, the colored man. But the
psychiatrist would not be building a scale of attitudes, as generally
understood, and in the process of scale-building the order of the two
propositions cited would probably be reversed. By attitudes we intend to refer
to, and should employ terms which express, the disposition of the subject rather
than the favorable or unfavorable effect upon the object. Perhaps we might say
"favorably disposed" and "unfavorably disposed," as indicating a motivation to
favor or the reverse, quite apart from any appraisal or calculation of the
probable outcome. In his scale of attitude toward the church, Thurstone uses the
terms "appreciation of" and "depreciation
of." These seem unexceptionable.

It may be added, without going into further particulars, that Thurstone has
exhibited great skill and

(
187) care in developing checks and measures of reliability for his
calculations at all points.

There is still another conceptual problem involved in the composition of the
board of judges. At least three possible types of selection may be considered.
In the first, the judges are presumed to be experts upon the issues. A
second mode of selection calls for a widely selected sample of persons from the
general population. A third calls for a sample from the group or class, the
attitudes of whose members are later to be tested. Certain difficulties attend
each of these modes of selection.

In studies preceding Thurstone's, the persons who have arranged the order of
the propositions composing the so-called scale have been presumed to be experts,
as, for example, teaching colleagues of the investigator, supposedly familiar
with the subject matter contained in the test. Such judges are accustomed to
rational reflection upon such issues, and, in particular, upon the immediate
issue. Hence, they will tend to classify attitudes as favorable or unfavorable,
rather than as favorably disposed or unfavorably disposed, in the sense of the
distinction drawn above. The very possession of expertness, then, may be viewed
as tending to render the judge incapable of arranging propositions in such a
manner that they will seem to non-experts to be in order and to have linear
differences equal.

An analogous difficulty applies to the selection of judges who will
constitute a sample of the general population. It may be contended that not only
the "equal-seeming interval" but the order of propositions itself may differ
considerably among different groups, on the average, as a result of differences
in cultural background. An opinion characteristically

(
188) regarded as favorable, or favorably disposed, to the Negro in the South
might be characteristically regarded as unfavorable, or unfavorably disposed, in
the North, and vice versa.[17]

The third of the three choices proposes the selection for judges of a sample
from the same class or group or segment of the population as that to which the
scale is to be applied in the subsequent test. It shares another difficulty with
the second choice, just examined: Will persons in any sample made up of
non-experts have sufficient understanding and command of abstractions, and
particularly of language, to verbalize their attitudes? That is, will the
average judge in the sample be intellectually capable of making the
discriminations called for by his instructions and detaching his own attitudinal
bias from the discriminal process? Is the average person competent to perform
this dual and rather dexterous task? Perhaps the answer is that these questions
apply with much the same force to the subjects to whom the scale is applied.
Perhaps the attitude scale, like other scales employed in science, is valid only
within the middle ranges of its phenomena—in other words, among persons whose
intellectuality and knowledge are neither too great nor too small.

There is still another disappointment in store if the third mode of obtaining
judges is employed. One of the major objectives of the method is to compare the
attitudes of different groups. If each group requires a measuring scale built up
for that group alone, direct comparisons between groups as to average tendencies
become impossible, although comparative variability might still be determined.

(
189)

Unsatisfactory as is this third among the choices, because of the limitations
that it seems to place upon the use of the scales, it seems to involve less
contradiction than do the first and the second. If so, we must be contented to
recognize that a scale devised with the aid of judges in Boston, for example,
when applied in Atlanta, would interpret attitudes solely in terms of, or
relative to, a Bostonian culture pattern.

It may be comforting to recall that similar considerations have often been
overlooked in intelligence measurements. Even the familiar scales of physical
measurement are regarded by physicists as relative, and as inapplicable when the
physical constants change appreciably. Thurstone has at least made a be-ginning,
and it seems to the writer a first beginning, in the exact and rational
application of psychophysical theory to the construction of an opinion scale,
with resulting occasion for the use of statistical methodology.

Statements of opinion, however, are to be regarded as but one among various
forms of expression of. attitude. Non-verbal, or more accurately,
non-propositional expressions may likewise be susceptible of classification, and
hence permit of counting and statistical analysis. Again, we may classify
attitude studies according to the degree of control which the investigator is
able to exercise. We thus have at least four types of actual or possible
attitude studies which might receive attention in the present survey.
Thurstone's studies are of the controlled verbal or propositional type. The
studies of "social distance" inaugurated by E. S. Bogardus,[18]
and the study by Donald Young [19]
of the
effects of classroom instruc-

(
190) -tion in changing student attitudes with respect to race differences,
might possibly be cited here as illustrations of controlled but
non-propositional studies. Others, more definitely of this type, may easily be
conceived. The late lamented silent drama, for instance, presented many
situations in which the attitudes of an audience were tested and might have be engauged by such indexes as the sound volume of applause or the ratio of
disgusted patrons walking out on the show.

It is in the realm of non-controlled data, whether semi-propositional or
otherwise, that the practical need of further and continued attitude studies
seems to the writer to be most evident. The difficulties of building scales
similar to Thurstone's, and of applying them to the measurement of the attitudes
of social groups, become increasingly difficult once we leave the classroom, the
discussion club and the other small, comparatively infrequent and highly
selected groups that enjoy having experiments tried upon them. Such groups
already have developed ways of making their attitudes articulate. It is the more
numerous work-a-day groupings of society, which are inaccessible to his
controlled measurements, about whose attitudes the social scientist is in the
most need of information. Students may be required, good natured academicians
may be cajoled, and sundry needy persons may be paid to sort cards containing
propositions into eleven piles. But it is difficult to imagine securing
comparable judgments, or satisfactory measurements in the final application,
from bricklayers, business men, Italian-Americans, nuns, stevedores, or
seamstresses. And, unless the scale itself is based upon equal-

(
191) seeming differences to a random sample of the group which is to be
measured, its validity—the degree to which it measures that which it purports to
measure—becomes open to question.

There is need, therefore, to examine more carefully the extent to which data
established for other purposes, but which to some extent reflect attitudes, may
be used as indexes for measurements of the latter. In illustration, such data
may be cited as political campaign appeals; election registrations and voting
returns; newspaper editorials, news content, advertisements and circulation;
purchases of commodities which are dependent upon certain activities, interests,
or social habits, such as bibles, bathing suits, hymn books, contraceptives,
football tickets, bath tubs, listerine, etc., etc.[20]

Further progress in the statistical attack upon atti-

(
192) -tudes and opinions depends upon continued development in several
directions: (a) upon laboratory studies of individual psychology which will aid
in further clarification of concepts; (b) upon attempts at further empirical
verification of the Thurstone scales; and (c) upon ingenious statistical
analysis of innumerable "uncontrolled" by-products of human activity, which
throw light in specific fashion upon the motivations in our minds.

These suggestions seem to indicate the possibility of an introduction into
the field of jurisprudence of a type of statistical methodology even more
novel than the developments discussed by Professor L. C. Marshall, Chapter
VII.

To please the introspectionist we might add: in the case of other
persons.

Rice, Stuart A., Quantitative Methods in Politics. New York: Alfred
A. Knopf, 1928, pp. 51-52. In criticizing the manuscript of this paper,
Professor Gordon W. Allport objects to the writer's identification of
"opinion" with "the rational and conscious elements" in motivation.

The discussion of Thurstone's work, unless otherwise noted, will be based
upon the monograph, Thurstone, L. L., and Chave, E. J., The Measurement of
Altitude, a Psychophysical Method and Some Experiments with a Scale for
Measuring Attitude toward the Church. Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1929.

Statement 72 in a schedule for the "Experimental Study of Attitude Toward
the Church," in The Measurement of Attitude, by L. L. Thurstone and E.
J. Chave, p. 62.

The writer is indebted to Professor Donald Young for this point, and for
instances which seem to illustrate it.

Appearing frequently in Sociology and Social Research.

"Some Effects of a Course in American Race Problems on the Race Prejudices
of 450 Undergraduates at the University of Pennsylvania," Journal of
Abnormal and Social Psychology, XXII, Oct. to Dec., 1927, pp. 235-42.

See Ogburn, W. F., and Talbot, N. S., "A Measurement of the Factors in the
Presidential Election of 1928," Social Forces, VIII, Dec., 1929, pp.
175-83. Some of the writer's students are engaged in work which is suggestive.
A seminar is considering the respective patterns of attitude which are said to
characterize and distinguish Philadelphians and New Yorkers. One member has
pointed out that New Jersey communities adjacent to New York permit moving
picture theaters to open on Sunday, while New Jersey communities adjacent to
Philadelphia, subject to the same state laws, require these theaters to close.
She is attempting to establish the zone of demarcation between the areas in
which the two attitudes here reflected are dominant. Others, by an elaborate
experimental classification of radio broadcasts in the two cities, are
attempting to determine what types of program in each case are presumably
catering to local tastes. Another has suggested comparisons of the library
circulations by respective library classification numbers in the two cities
and in intervening communities. Another is finding repetitive and classifiable
clues to the evaluations placed upon various social attributes by a study of
the items of information entered in their autobiographical biographies by
state legislators. These represent a few among perhaps two dozen types of
uncontrolled and partially non-verbal data which have been discussed as
possible indexes of underlying attitudes. Most of these have within them at
least the theoretical possibility of statistical analysis.

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